Hippolytus (Classical Acting)

At the start of the semester, our Classical Acting class took on a very interesting project called Hippolytus. This was a very condensed version of the play and total it took about 30 minutes or so.

We started by learning this hunting chant in Latin. Which was quite difficult but actually really cool. As we started to piece this show together, it became very apparent that it was not going to be staged like a normal play. We had different people playing the characters and the layout was different (we sat on each side of our playing space while the scene took place). Being a part of this really opened my eyes to the creative liberties you can take with a piece of theatre. I never would have thought to stage it that way or direct it that way. But it was a valuable lesson to learn.

First of all, you never have to stick to the realms of "traditional theatre". It was fun to play all the different characters at different times and to watch this story unfold.

Second, never underestimate the power of using your voice or simple objects to create sound and add atmosphere. In several scenes we used wooden staves or our voices or the rims of wine glasses. Each item added a different effect to the scene at hand. On top of that, it was really neat to work together as a class to come up with the sounds and work through the scene transitions.

At first I was worried that no one would be able to follow the story line, but we had a small audience for our final performance and they assured us that they were able to follow everything. They knew who was who and what was goin on. It just goes to show that I think we assume our audiences don't really pay attention. But that's really not true. Our Audiences can follow story lines without everything being spelled out for them.

The other really neat thing about Hippolytus, was the struggle against time. We were challenged to move as slowly as possible across the room while continuing to fight for something. That exercise has always been one of my favorites that we do in Professor Bugg's classes. After that, he went on to explain that that is the feeling we had to infuse into all the Hippolytus scenes.

And he was right.

We had to consciously think about how slow we could move and then do everything even slower than that. At times I found myself kind of bored with the idea, but when I really stopped to watch and think about, it is truly fascinating. In this world where everything moves so quickly and is instantaneous, how often do we slow down and think about every muscle in our body and how it is moving and responding and reacting to our environment. By forcing us to slow down, we really got to focus on what it means for the whole body to be engaged.

I will admit that I don't think I quite grasped it as a whole; I think I was still moving too fast, but I was mostly laying down on the hard ground on my hip. Which, right after hip surgery, made things pretty difficult. So I moved as slowly as I could, but I bet I could move slower now.